The Anti-Vaxx Trucker Convoy and "Fake News"

 

Canadian Cynic has been doing a great job of chronicling the tale of the convoy of right-wingers who are ostensibly protesting mandatory vaccine mandates for Canadian truck drivers re-entering the country from the USA.  I say "ostensibly" because nobody that I know of has explained how they can be so upset since they need to be vaccinated to enter the USA in the first place.  Another reason why I'm using the word "ostensibly" is because, as this editorial from Policy Options points out, besides containing long-time anti-vaxxers of the Hippie persuasion, and individuals who have suffered genuine economic costs from our governments' mishandling of lockdowns, the majority of people in this protest movement are the same right-wing, racist, authoritarian, nutbars who constituted the Canadian "Yellow-Vest" movement and all of the other moronic, hypocritical, whining cry-baby political cults in Canada for decades.

The anti-lockdown/anti-vaccine movements have had nearly two years in which to network, reach new audiences and test their messages to improve their outreach. These well-networked individuals may continue to stay in touch with extremists as they move to new issues – whatever those may be.

These new grievances will likely be along the lines of previous far-right extremist preoccupations, such as the promotion of anti-immigration, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic views, policies and violence. They may also manifest through a youth-driven culture war that seeks to “take Canada back” from what is seen as a coalition of socialists, progressives and globalists. Conspiracy movement adherents, such as those in the QAnon movement, may seek to tie their beliefs to anti-government extremism, posing a serious threat to public order.

In his latest post Cynic discusses the grossly inflated numbers of convoy participants provided by its cheerleaders (as opposed to the much smaller numbers that have been verified) and reflects upon how these shameless hypocrites have been shrieking about "Fake News" for years and years.  I once attempted to discuss the appearance of the term "Fake News" here at the Schoolyard:

Right now I think it needs to be said that the first time I really noticed the term "fake news" was when Donald Trump kept using it to condemn any and all negative coverage of himself and his presidential campaign. Of course the concept behind "fake news" has always been around. We called it "propaganda," or "lies" or "bullshit" or "deceit," or any number of terms. Perhaps even "fake news" once in a while. FOX News was a notorious source of false facts, sins of omission, slanted editorials and other crimes against truth.

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But, again, the real popularization of the specific term "fake news" appears to have come from Trump. And this is interesting, because Donald Trump is a shameless con-artist. He's a liar. A fraud. He's a flim-flam man.

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The reflexive defense mechanism of a liar/con-artist is to deflect attention away from their own lies and to go on the offensive against their accusers.

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So, Trump has to call critical coverage of his failings as "fake news" or, IOW "lies" as a means of self-defense, since he's a total fraud. To do this he resorts to the whole idea of a corrupt "liberal" media that right-wing hypocrites and morons so love to wail about.

Unfortunately for us (and fortunately for Trump) his target (the "liberal media") is an easy one. Here are some complaints we on the Left share with many Trump supporters:

1. The media lies. (see: "Iraq", "Russiagate", protest movements)

2. The media is slanted.

3. The media is elitist.

4. The media serves the powerful.

Obviously the denizens of Trumpland and "Ford Nation" and "InfoWars" and Ezra Levant's "Bigotry Cruises" have their own spin on what they consider to be lies. These are such people as to notice that a sympathetic portrait of a Black person, or a First Nations person in the news is not 100% indifferent (and therefore "neutral") and choose to rail against that. But they share with us a disdain for the media's craven worship of "free trade." (At least we used to condemn corporate free trade deals. Alas, Trump Derangement Syndrome has got many leftists defending NAFTA.)

Basically the corporate media espouses the neo-liberal corporate agenda. It's inevitable. It's what they do. It's in their DNA. The problem for them is that the corporate neo-liberal agenda has fucked so many ordinary people over that left-wing and right-wing are turning against it in its entirety. "The center cannot hold." The elites cannot paper-over the shitty outcomes enough to hide the stench.

So, the issue isn't "deceitful right-wingers hypocritically claim that corporate news is biased against them."  Corporate news is biased.  It is blatant propaganda.  But we have to place corporate news in its proper place in our political-economic cultural environment.  The corporate or mainstream media is a creature of capitalism.  It is owned by capitalists and funded by capitalists.  In a country like Canada an institution like the CBC functions within a capitalist eco-system and is funded by politicians who mainly serve capitalism and is administered by bureaucrats who have endeared themselves to these mainly pro-capitalist politicians.  

How does the media relate to the right-wing?  Well, we all know how the vast majority of Canada's newspapers infamously endorsed the stephen harper Conservative Party of Canada after said party's serial abuses of all aspects of our parliamentary pseudo-democracy.  So they're right-wing. And major television network news (Global TV and CTV) are ridiculously right-wing. But they're corporate right-wing. And, culturally, they're also mostly liberal on social issues.  (Social issues are one way that capitalist elites can give some ground.  For instance, there might be a lot of structural reasons behind the higher levels of poverty among Blacks in the USA, and there might be reasons why US capitalism would like there to be a distinct minority that can be the first to be shed during economic downturns (thus sparing the majority and avoiding a larger political backlash); but to the extent that a talented Black person could make them money, to that extent will US capitalism reject racism and embrace diversity.  Capitalism is a political-economic system.  It isn't inherently race-based, or religious, or heterosexual.  Capitalism isn't even sex-based.  Patriarchy is a separate system.  An actually larger one in which (or besides which) capitalism operates.  So while men might organize to keep women down, capitalism itself doesn't care about female CEO's or female Presidents of the United States, so long as they are committed to promoting profit over everything else and serving the capitalist system as a whole.

Whether or not the mainstream media reports something accurately or not depends upon how much accurate reporting impacts capitalism either negatively or positively.  (And these cost-benefit analyses are always done based on short-term thinking.  Capitalism has been destroying itself for decades now.  Like a parasite killing its host.)

I have to buy groceries, wash dishes, do laundry, do push-ups, and work on my cartoons.  I'm going to try to wrap this up quickly.

So, who is organizing this convoy? They are primarily far-right Canadians of mostly less-than oligarch status.  They are racist conspiracy theorists.  They are morons who believe in a moronic conceptualization of "individual freedom."  The are arrogant narcissists.  They are proudly ignorant.  They are a lunatic fringe of the general population.  They are the sort of people who can (for example) blame all the violence of the Trump orchestrated January 6th, 2021 Washinton D.C. riots on Antifa one second while praising the event and the rioters to the skies the next second without skipping a beat or feeling even a twinge of embarrassment.

But notice that they've received individual donations, some as large as $25,000.  Who has $25,000 to throw at something so stupid and useless?  Rich people.  Capitalists.  To the extent that any capitalist has problems with the lockdowns, or [especially in the case of the oil industry] with the imposition of any regulations on their doing business, or with the tepid, reality-based policies of the Liberal Party of Canada (as opposed with the Conservative's willingness to ignore all reality if it serves capital), to that extent will the corporate media cover the convoy properly.  But to the extent that the convoy participants reject free trade, or the exploitation of minorities who can be paid less than white people, or any other ideas they have that offends capitalism, to that extent will they be derided or at least ignored.  And ponder this:  The extent that anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers contribute to the prolongation of the pandemic and to the demonization of the pharmaceutical industry, is a big factor in how those capitalists who acknowledge reality about the pandemic and who are aware that it is in their interests for it to stop, will ally with the pharmaceutical industry in opposing these stupid yahoos.

I'm not going to say that I agree with everything "progressives" have to say about all of these issues.  But I'm tired of typing this post so I shall end it here.